Thursday, April 14, 2011

Though it's (hopefully) common knowledge among all y'all dearest Readers of mine that my musings here are purely recreational, casual, not meant to garner fame or fortune—hence the sporadic posting, ample ampersands, & ubiquitous use of terms like "fuck" & "donkey balls"—I do still enjoy, on occasion, perusing my viewership statistics. Blogspot is kind enough to provide this feature—"Stats"—that tells you your number of views, search terms through which people have found your page, even from what country & operating system these hits originate (in my case, a bizarrely high influx from PC users from Denmark).

More often than not, the information is banal, perhaps worth a giggle, but today—well—let me just say this: you know you're doing something right when your three most-searched terms to date are, in order, "gigantic breasts," "famous serial killers," & "Iggy Pop bleeding from chest."

It's no secret that Richard O'Brien (AKA, the guy who comes out of the toilet in Spice World—or, for those not living in my brain, Riff Raff) wrote a number of Rocky Horror's songs prior to the play's inception, before Brad & Janet & Transylvanian transvestites—which means that, though they work seamlessly enough within the musical, they also sound especially fantastic when performed by a band, stand-alone & punked out. (Please, for the love of all that is holy, check out The Rocky Horror Punk Rock Show—mentioned previously here.) "Superheroes" is definitely one such song—that two-step wail of the guitar, lyrics brimming with neo-Nietzchean angst—&, at least in my mind, the shouting of "stumble, stumble, fall!" after each line of the second verse, as besooted Janet can't quite keep her footing in the post-rocket mansion ruins. What the cover does so brilliantly, though, is bring this sentiment to a boil—implicitly beg you to dance through the bleak pronouncements, thrash to the bitter end—to stumble-stumble-fall, hard, with intent.

My Name is:

Jukebox graduate. Post-collegiate. Recovering anemophobic, fresh off the boat with a dance belt & a tube of chapstick. An alligator, a mama-papa comin' for you. Unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death—or, you know, between old West Wing episodes & showertime Ramones renditions. Turn-ons: Poe stories, sparkly things; turn-offs: self-proclaimed audiophiles, Twitter. Lifelong ambition: to write a book for the 33 1/3 Series—&/or marry Eddie Izzard.
In someone else's words: "I am a confused musician who got sidetracked into this goddamn Word business for so long that I never got back to music—except maybe when I find myself oddly alone in a quiet room with only a typewriter to strum on and a yen to write a song. Who knows why? Maybe I just feel like singing—so I type. These quick electric keys are my Instrument, my harp, my RCA glass-tube microphone, and my fine soprano saxophone all at once. That is my music, for good or ill, and on some nights it will make me feel like a god."